Intel stops to make TV chips, makes them for tablets

PanARMENIAN.Net - Intel said it was winding down its TV business and reallocating the resources to develop smartphones and tablets, IDG News Service reported.

Intel will move engineers who were developing TV chips to the group responsible for tablets, said Claudine Mangano, an Intel spokeswoman. It's also refocusing its efforts on IP-based content delivery networks, for which there are similarities between tablets and TVs, she sad.

Sony's TV sets and Logitech's Revue set-top box, both running Google TV software, are the more famous products based on Intel's TV chips. Its CE4100 and CE4200 chips were adopted by companies including Comcast and Boxee. Intel has other TV efforts under way, including the Widget Channel, a platform designed to meld television and the Internet, which was announced in 2008 with Yahoo.

Intel isn't completely abandoning the development of TV chips, though, Mangano said."We work with a number of customers. We are not breaking them out, but we will work with each customer on a case-by-case basis to support them as needed," Mangano said.

Intel also said last month it was putting more money into the development of chips for smartphones and tablets as it tries to establish a bigger foothold in those markets.